“thinking” together, staying alive
February 7–28, 2025
PerForm Open Academy of Arts and Activations 2025 (POA), T:>Works’ cultural touchpoint returns with its third iteration. Following the successful live gatherings of PerForm Fellows from the Global South in 2023 and 2024, this year’s edition features a line-up of 17 PerForm Fellows. They include eminent thought leaders and cultural innovators across diverse fields of contemporary indigeneity, curation, research, education, visual culture, disability-access, and performance. These fellows will present their strategies for activating contexts and communities, raising provocative possibilities for staying alive in these uncertain times.
“thinking” together, staying alive
Little did we know in April 2023 when we began the PerForm Open Academy of Arts & Activations to reflect on potentialities and futurities, that the world we knew was continuing to slide more and more into uncertainty. In 2023 we set out for the Open Academy to be a porous space bridging solidarities and knowledges in the precarious present. In 2024, we focused on the never-finished topic of decoloniality, insisting on a distribution of power privileging local communities’ collective forms of authority. Now in 2025, we are poised on a new world order which will demand us to simply stay alive. How can we “think” together to stay alive?
PerForm Open Academy of Arts & Activations 2025 comprises three components:
The Mentor Series featuring leading voices in transformative practices, including theatre director and author Anne Bogart (New York), curator and thinker Anselm Franke (Zurich), curator and producer Gridthiya Gaweewong (Bangkok), contemporary Truku weaver Labay Eyong /Lin Gieh-wen (Taipei), disabled dance-maker Marc Brew (Glasgow), curator and art management consultant Pooja Sood (New Delhi), champion of post-migrant theatre Shermin Langoff (Berlin), critic, researcher and curator Vivian Ziherl (Rotterdam), and conceptual artist and choreographer Xavier Le Roy (Berlin). Drawing on their decades-long practices, they will address issues of cultural representation, stakeholder and public engagement, and challenge conventional perceptions on what is possible today.
POA Opening Studio: Contemporary Indigeneity is a week-long immersive engagement with the arts, social-political and heritage ecologies of Nepal. Artree Nepal is a collective of five diverse indigenous artists who intersect with the younger collective Kala Kulo and an independent writer working on histories and archives. These individuals—Bishal Yonjan (*Tamang), Hit Man Gurung (*Gurung), Indu Tharu (*Tharu), Lavkant Chaudhary (*Tharu), Mekh Limbu (*Limbu), Priyankar Bahadur Chand, Sheelasha Rajbhandari (*Newa) and Subas Tamang (*Tamang)[1]—spotlight indigenous narratives, grounded on issues surrounding reclamation of rights, equity, and sustenance of identity and culture. Their practices offer distinct approaches on navigating limitations and developing ground-up activations that effectively and sensitively engage resources and voices from the indigenous communities of Nepal as they nuance mutual relationships between the human and non-human.
POA Closing Studio: Embodiments and Exhibitions helmed by conceptual artist and choreographer Xavier Le Roy, examines the effects of generated movement materials on the qualities of relationships between performers and between spectators and performers. This work-in-studio exploration serves as a durational experiment in collaborative creation.
PerForm is conceptualised and led by T:>Works Artistic Director, Dr. Keng Sen Ong. It redefines an academy by embracing an openness which opposes hierarchical learning, refuses elite membership and ultimately unpacks the institution into a porous space.
PerForm Open Academy of Arts and Activations—a porous space bridging solidarities, knowledges and futurities in the precarious present—is presented by T:>Works, an independent and international arts company based in Singapore at its space, 72-13.
Events
The Mentor Series: February, 7–22
POA Opening Studio: Contemporary Indigeneity February, 12–15
Public Workshop by Marc Brew: February, 22
POA Closing Studio: Embodiments and Exhibitions February, 24–28
[1] Names of the Indigenous Peoples the artists identify as. Indigenous Peoples make up close to 36 percent of the total Nepali population.
